Twits and tweets

May 30, 2013

FLINT - Warren Buffett, the famed investor, sent his first ever tweet recently.

It said, "Warren is in the house."

OK, that's not exactly "Buy every share of Exxon you can lay your hands on, stat!" which is the kind of tweet I'd find useful from Buffett.

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Andy Heller

But it's a start.

I'll probably "follow" his tweets for a while. (Lord, it pains me to write or say that word. Tweeting doesn't sound like something a grown man should be doing. Besides, the service is called Twitter. Shouldn't the people who use it be called Twits and their posts called Twitters?)

But I'm not going to follow him forever. With me, he's on probation until he proves that he deserves a long-term spot. It's my new policy.

He can help his cause by dropping a pearl of wisdom that makes me rich. It won't happen but a guy can dream. What will probably happen instead is that Warren will turn out to be dull or annoying, like most people on Twitter.

I see tweets like this all the time: "Beautiful outside today - planting flowers LOL."

That kind of post doesn't just bore me, it gets inside my head. I end up, first of all, being annoyed that the poster thinks anyone else would care that she's planting flowers. C'mon, lady, the flowers probably don't even care, much less me.

But I also get irritated by LOL, which means laugh out loud, for those of you who don't speak emoticon. I think: Why is she laughing out loud? She didn't say anything funny. Certainly not laugh out loud funny. So what, in her mind, caused her to use LOL? What was she trying to communicate - that the weather makes her happy? If so, why didn't she just say that?

Maybe I analyze too much.

The only tweets worse than the achingly dull ones are the navel-gazing ones. Here's what I received this morning: "Many thanks!!! RT @Insidious: I gave @LuxuryPRGal +K about #SocialMedia on @klout."

Now, come on. What am I supposed to do with that? It doesn't say anything! It's just a series of hyperlinks, hash tags and gobbledygook! Why would someone post that? That's the kind of thing people who think they're fascinating post. If that's you, I think I speak on behalf of the rest of the world when I say: "You're not."

Clearly, I need to weed my follow list, but it's tough. I end up feeling guilty. Maybe, I figure, the poster was just having a bad day, and if I unfollow him that'll be the last straw and he'll end up kicking his dog.

I don't want that on my head, so I seldom unfollow people, even if they richly deserve it. Which means that my Twitter feed is clotted with the mind-drippings of people I don't know, don't find interesting or only followed because they followed me.

I need to be ruthless. I need to get over myself and rid my Twitter feed of everyone whose tweets don't entertain, inform or stimulate.

The only problem is, if do that, there won't be much left - just me and old Warren.

And, like I say, he's on probation.

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EDITOR'S NOTE - Andy Heller, an award-winning columnist, appears weekly in the Daily Press. He graduated from Escanaba Area High School in 1979. Write to Andrew Heller at andrewhellercolumn@gmail.com or follow him on Facebook and Twitter.